The Price of Freedom

Revelation 1:1-8

Sacrifice is something that previous generations understood intimately. On this the 7th of December, we might remember the sacrifices of US citizens during the World War II era as soldiers went to war and those who were left at home experienced rationing and other deprivations. Everyone in that generation knew that there was a price for the preservation of freedom. One of the challenges that we have now as a nation at war is that we at home find ourselves so disconnected that the fighting doesn't seem real to us, unless we have a relative who is actually deployed. (For Bob Herbert's discussion of the particular impact on the children of those deployed, click here.) Even those who make the political decisions that lead to military action are unlikely to have sons or daughters whose necks will be on the line once the decision is made. The cost is so abstract for us, that we forget that there is a price.

The message of Revelation 1 is multifaceted, but it like the rest of the book is designed to reorient our thinking about the past, present, and future. The revelation or "unveiling" comes from God to the angel to John to the reader to the hearers to provide the blessing of insight that goes beyond human perception. And this first section about Jesus Christ is foundational to all of the rest of the discussion. Jesus is the faithful witness, the one whose record is true. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, the one who creates the pathway for all of us to follow into eternal life. Jesus is the prince over all the kings of the earth, the one before whom all the governors and potentates of this world will have to bow.

But none of those titles struck me as much as the phrase that followed them: To him who loved us and freed us from our sins with his blood.... Forgiveness and freedom are never cheap, even though sometimes we live as if they are. The breaches and the gaps and the problems that our sins cause for us and for others are not easily washed away. Loving us and making a way for us to worship God in spirit and in truth cost Jesus his life. Now we live as a community, a kingdom of priests unto God. This is no light thing.

As we share in this season of Advent, celebrating his coming, today we remember that the one who was born as a baby died on a rugged cross and will return as ruler of all. We remember also that the freedom we have become of his first advent was not cheap.